Tuesday, 26 June 2012

Last Saturday, I have to admit I was really looking forward to mudlarking – hadn’t been down for over two weeks, it felt like longer. Jumped off the bus at Bank this time, accompanied by one very reluctant teen and our good friend Patsy.

As we made our way through the narrow streets toward the Thames, the lights inside St Stephen Walbrook caught our eye. Pasty and I couldn’t resist a quick snoop – much to our young companions dismay. Neither of us had a clue what it was, a kindly gentleman on hand as part of the ‘celebrate the city’ enlighted us. One of Wren’s creations, some say his finest, planned in the 1670s just after the fire of London. I strained to remember which bits from the Thames would have been knocking around at the same time, bartmann jugs and delft came to mind, Pipkins and bone nit combs added when I returned home. The church was just breathtaking. Amusingly with Henry Moore altar in the middle, surrounded by tapestry kneeling cusions by Patrick Heron, causing predictable consternation when installed in the 1980s.

St Stephen Walbrook with Altar by Henry Moore

It was a beautiful day a gorgeous combination of rain filled smoky grey clouds and bursts of sunshine and blue sky. The river was slithering out fast as we descended to the boulder strewn foreshore, the tide a really low one. Spotted my first washed up fish, a long glistening, silvery eel. We were only down there for an hour, as much as my teen could tolerate, between the three of us we gathered up some lovely things. Top find has to go to our teen, a decorated clay pipe probably from 1840- 1910. I’ve been looking for one of these for ages.

Decorated Clay Pipe frm 1840-1910 found Mudlarking on the Thames

I also picked up a small fragment of imprinted pipe stem ‘138 Bemondsey’ one side, ‘...aull’ on the other. A good day for clay pipes.

Imprinted Clay Pipe Stem found on the Thames.

Another combined nit/comb caught my eye. It doesn’t look finished to me as the teeth just look too close together. This time the material looks like wood rather than the expected bone and it’s darker than the other two I’ve found. Underlining the teeth are thin golden looking lines.

Nit/comb found on Mudlarking on the Thames Foreshore

Other bits and pieces below, include a vibrant large chunk of polychrome delft found by Patsy, porcelain, medallion from Bartmann jug, sections of medieval roof tile, mocha wear, shards of more refined plates and cups, another heavily finger printed fired clay scrap and yet more glass pieces we couldn’t resist.

Thames Mudlarking Another Day's Finds

A perfect London day was replete with lunch at the Tate, a quick canter through Damien Hirst with shark, inside of the cow and beautiful live butterflies fortunately momentarily capturing the teens approval, and a walk along the northern Thames path towards London Bridge to catch the bus home – noticing the shard is nearly complete. An irritating interruption to minecraft for others.

Friday, 22 June 2012

I don't often find glass or pottery with writing on. Over the last few months mudlarking these are probably the best examples. Nice to find
sufficient writing to help trace precise origins. ‘VITREOUS STONE BOTTLES WARRANTED NOT TO ABSORB J.BOURNE
PATENTEE DENBY & CODNOR PARK POTTERIES NEAR DERBY’ was stamped onto these 150 ink bottles, produced by a Derbyshire pottery between 1833 – 1850

Large fragments of Derbyshire Stoneware Ink Bottle 1833-1850

The Bourne company was set up in 1806 by William Bourne, a local entrepreneur, who heard about the exceptional clay found during construction of a Derbyshire road. He purchased some of the land and started production in 1809. He appointed his son Joseph to run the pottery. The"J.Bourne& Son" mark was not
used until about 1850.

The clay used in making the stoneware bottles was a coarse, sandy and
heat-resistant quality. When fired at a high temperature it became very hard,
dense and non-absorbent. These bottles are referred to as salt-glazed pottery;
salt glazing was a popular method of decorating stoneware in the mid 1800's.
Common salt was thrown onto the kiln fires when the embers were at their
hottest. The salt vapor combined with the surface of the pot to produce a shiny
brown surface coating. The process for producing these salt-glazed wares was
patented as noted by the stamp at the base of the bottle below the J. Bourne
& Son company name.

Sunday, 17 June 2012

I keep thinking I'm going to run out of things to blog about, but every week there seems to be another type of pottery or object to investigate.

Over the last 8 months I’ve collected a handful
of this stuff, gradually clocking it was different from the other blue and
white china I’d been picking up. I kept it in my Westerwald pottery box,realising it was similar but not quite the
same. Took me a while to track down what it is, as there aren’t many pictures
on the web, but persistence paid off.

In the 18th century the not so well
off found porcelain too expensive, delft ware too fragile. There was a market
for cheaper alternatives; German Westerwald decorated grey stoneware filled
part of this gap. Some say English potters sought to compete with these
products by creating a similar looking but this time white stoneware, rather
unfortunately retrospectively named ‘debased' scratched blue stoneware. I’m yet again struck by the modern looking
design of old pottery, in this case free
flowing, incised decoration with quite messy splashes of cobalt blue which
bleed over the incised lines,thus
emulating Westerwald to some degree. The products seem to be quite limited,
mugs, jugs and chamber pots. Decorated
with sprays of leaves (technical name apparently is foliate) amusingly the
chamber pots frequently boasted spig-moulded raised medallions with the cipher
of George III and sometimes a picture of hisprofile. Apparently this blue stoneware was only fashionable forone decade from 1765, with chamber pots
remaining popular for a longer period – I wonder why. This flash in the pan
appearance doesn’t quite square with how frequently I find this stuffwhich seems about as often as I find
Westerwald– strange, maybe it was more of a must have or cheaper product hence
its prevalence.

Thursday, 14 June 2012

Last Thursday I managed to fit in a short trip
to the Thames. The mudlarkers leaving as I arrived remarking how disappointingly high the low the tide
had been and attributing it to the strong winds that day. I only had an hour to
seek out treasures before I was cut off.

First interesting thing I spotted has to be
find of the day. I slid it into my
pocket that night as we left to holiday with a group of friends 'the millers' on the Isle of Wight – we all spent a few
moments that evening and the next day pondering what an earth this object could
be. Delightful in so many ways absolutely covered in clearly discernible finger
prints hundreds of years old, so full of life with deep impressions of the fingers
that squidged the clay. A chuck away
piece preserved forever and now coveted by its finder possibly half a millennia
later. Full of intrigue – it appears to be glazed and fired but would have been
squashed before it went into the kiln. Was it an object that went wrong, but
why fire it? Jen suggested it could be a rest for another form (the word they
seem to use in the archaeological trade) a couple of small flat roundish areas on the surface
supports this theory and are those blackish marks on the bottom that Moira drew our attention to the result of
being at the bottom of the kiln? One small
side section is unglazed Janey wondered whether the clay was pulled from a
larger object? The potters among you may
be able to shed more light - click on the photos if you want a better view of finger prints.

Thames Mudlarking Find of the Day top and bottom.

As I was leaving the foreshore I came across an
unusually large piece of redware, with a type of handle I’d only come across once
before. I almost left it, on picking it up discovered rather lovely thick
glossy green glaze on the reverse. I suspect it is London redware 1580 onwards.

London Redware pot handle and reverse found mudlarking on the Thames

Pictured below are the remaining finds, very old glass which gains an iridescence when
over a certain age, a post on glass will surely appear in the next couple of
months, the second incisor I’ve found –
is it from a dog? Shards of Westerwald, black basalt (a post to appear soon), a
more refined piece of delft than I usually discover, a slither of decorated
clay pipe bowl and a selection of more modern pottery shards that caught my
eye.

Sunday, 10 June 2012

Over the months I've noticed quite a few pieces
of pottery with mainly blue but sometimes green crinkly edges. Eventually
tracked down the name, once I have this the story is quite easy to piece together. I can’t better others descriptions of this pottery.

'Shell-edged
decoration first appeared on creamwares. Later, shell-edge became the most
common type of decoration found on pearlware. Colours applied to the rims were
usually blue or green with red being less common. The
earlier examples of the shell-edged decoration are generally well painted, with
the brush strokes being drawn in from the edge, which creates a feathery
appearance. In later examples (usually after 1800 or 1805), it was common to
sweep the brush along the edge laterally, producing a stripe’ St Mary's UniversityDifferent brush strokes nicely illustrated in the photographs of my Thames
mudlarking finds below, with the green piece showing the lazier more efficient edging ‘line’ and the
blues showing the careful brushing downwards. You can see the bluish tinge in the ‘white’
attributable to the cobalt blue added to the glaze, so characteristic of Pearlware.

Thames Mudlarking finds 'Shell Edged' Pearlware 1780- 1840

'The 18th century saw the
development of a style of tableware, which combined handsome colour and smooth
texture of plain Creamware with a moulded and often tinted edging, intended to
draw the eye to the food being served. The most popular edging pattern proved to
be one, which imitated the random yet rhythmic structure of a scallop shell and
Shell Edge Ware produced in vast quantities by potteries throughout England.
Inspired by original designs in Leeds Pottery’s 18th century pattern
books this new range of Shell Edge dinnerware rekindles the spirit of the Age
of Elegance'.world wide shopping

'Such wares
were always termed simply 'edged' in potters' invoices and price lists. Next to
plain undecorated creamware they were the cheapest items offered for sale and
thus although very serviceable, tended to be purchased by consumers at the
lower end of the income scale. They were cheap to make and cheap to buy. As
time passed many variants of 'shell edge' developed, some with quite
elaborately moulded borders'.The potteries

British shell-edged earthenware was produced
and exported in such large volumes between 1780 and 1860 that it appears to
have been used in almost every American household. In terms of quantity, being
the least expensive English earthenware available with color decoration,
shell-edged ware was in fact one of the most successful developments in ceramic
production during the 18th and 19th centuries.

Enoch Wood’s Burslem pottery works shipped
262,000 pieces in a single consignment. The surviving invoices of American
merchants are especially telling: shell-edged products accounted for 40-70% of
dinnerware sold in America between 1800 and the eve of the Civil War in 1861,
despite the introduction of a number of more fashionable styles during this
period.Odyseey marine exploration 2011

Tuesday, 5 June 2012

As my husband and youngest packed the car to go
on holiday caught the 141 bus early to catch the very low, low tide this
morning, aiming to return before my eldest teenager woke up. It was lovely down
there today, the Thames was almost like a mill pond, although nothing can still
that current ripping down towards the sea.

Find of the day has to be a 300-450 year old almost complete salt-glazed stoneware Bellamine face. History and previously
found fragments appear in an earlier blog post Bartmann jugs. My sister found one a month
ago and I’ve been looking for an example since I began mudlarking, so really
pleased to have finally captured this face.

Thames Mudlarking Find of the Day Bellamine Face

There were only 5 others mudlarking today. I
met a lovely guy from Florida, who comes over once a year to mudlark on the
Thames, when the tides are at their lowest. As I was leaving the foreshore
another guy came over to show us these tiny very old cuff links. He’s been
mudlarking for 32 years and had also found a few coins, clearly he has
developed an expert ‘eye’. The coins still elude me and my Florida companion.

Nothing else particularly of note was found
today, but nonetheless some nice examples of delft, slipware, Westerwald, porcelain and
other bits and pieces. Still can’t resist picking up those Elizabethan pins
when I come across a scattering amongst the mud. Today’s full
mudlarking haul is pictured below

Thames Mudlarking Haul from Today

Took longer to get home as city roads were
closed as the crowds amassed to see the jubilee procession, so had to navigate through
the back streets. As I walked up our steep road my phone rang, my eldest had
just woken up ready for scrambled eggs on toast.

Monday, 4 June 2012

The history of English tableware is scattered
across the Thames foreshore, something I’ve never been particularly interested
in until I started wondering about the origins of the pottery I’d found.

As ever those modern looking ‘finds’ turn out
to be quite old, so for anyone else interested in identifying pottery from the
Thames and finding out about its history here goes..

In 1720 potters succeeded in producing the
white pottery with a glossy sheen people had been hankering after. High
stoneware kiln temperatures gave the kaolin clay durability. The first sets of
matching tableware were produced and were far cheaper than porcelain alternatives. Less
expensive plain white plates, sometimes with relief patterns were the most
popular. They were considered very fashionable in their day.

Large amounts of the stuff was exported to the
US and Europe, Staffordshire potters had begun an international industry. Whilst
there was clear demand, the cost of producing stoneware prevented it from
becoming widespread. Consequently potters sought to develop cheaper refined earthen
wares. Creamware was the first mass
produced tableware from 1750. Iron oxide in the glaze gave it a yellow cream
colour. Very functional, it was the first widely available ceramic that enabled
you to cut food without chipping the glaze.
Again the centre of production was in Staffordshire (plus Yorkshire). Wedgewood
came onto the scene in 1759 and although not the ‘inventor’, was at the
forefront of developing both Creamware and Pearlware. Not satisfied with Creamware, Wedgewood’s letters
reveal the search for ‘a white Earthenware body, and a colourless or white
opaque glaze, very proper for Tea & other wares’, From 1775 Pearlware moved
the industry one step closer. China clay was added to the creamware body and cobalt
blue to the glaze, giving it a blue tint and a whiter appearance– a blueing technique of
course still used in our washing powders and clothes manufacture.

The introduction of the ceramic plates coincided with a change in table manners, I wonder if they were related?. 'The children learning their table etiquette in Chardin's 1740 painting are in the avant-garde of a cultural revolution. Cutlery, as opposed to eating with your fingers; sitting up straight in a high-backed chair; these were innovations in the way people defined themselves at table in 18th-century Europe'. (Jonathan Jones Guardian)

By 1750 white salt-glazed stoneware had caused
the demise of the delftware industry and by 1760 the refined earthenwares, Creamware and Pearlware, were
superceding white stoneware.

My initial impetus for returning to the Thames
was to collect pottery for mosaic making, not something I’d ever done before I
might add. Playing around with blue and white pottery, I soon realised that I’d
need large amounts of white crockery to surround the interesting bits. A month
ago I therefore collected a bag of white pottery, extremely abundant as I
assume no one else bothers to pick this up. Now that I’ve found out a bit about
the different types of ‘white’ pottery, I can see that virtually all the fragments
I’d picked up were Creamware- which fits with its ubiquitousness.

From the 1740s
block moulds were used, each imprinting one of several standard patterns around the plate rim. I’ve found a handful of these over the past 8 months. By
far the most popular was the ‘barley’ or ‘basket’ design. My
favourite is the feather pattern, I
haven’t yet spotted any of the nicely named
‘dot, diaper and basket’.

When you see the different types of pottery side
by side it’s easy to distinguish the creamware from the slightly grey
stoneware. The two feather edged pieces illustrating this nicely above. I’ve found it quite hard to distinguish the White salt glaze stoneware
from Pearlware, eventually concluding the easiest
way is to catch the salt glaze pitted ‘orange peel effect’ in the light. Although when together as the two barley pieces above show, you can see the pearlware does appear whiter than the stoneware. Apart
from the blue and green ‘shell edged’ pottery, to be covered in the next post, I believe I’ve only found two fragments of Pearlware, one shown below with rather crude
enamel overglaze, the bluey tinge created by cobalt blue is really clear.

Thames Mudlarking: Close up of Pearlware Pottery Fragment with enamel overglaze

Meanwhile my internet ordered box of mosaic
materials sits in a corner whilst I'm preoccupied with classifying, sorting,
researching, documenting and pondering my finds. Not to mention the still
frequent trips to that intriguing river with all its secrets. It’s going to take a while to get this mudlarking thing out of my
system.

Saturday, 2 June 2012

I picked up these
two objects last weekend. Both mysteries. No joy identifying via google. Any ideas?

On first
sight thought this object was probably plastic, but having almost discarded very old objects before, popped it in my bag just in case. Later, on closer inspection concluded it was pottery. A small oval dome 1.5 cm tall and 3cm wide. Did it come from an Egyptian
black teapot – some kind of tea strainer? Last Sunday, a guy at the Thames
Discovery event at the Tower of London, reckoned it was bone not pottery and that
the holes were too big for a strainer. He thought it was probably used for ‘sprinking’ something....

Thames Mudlarking Mystery Find 1 Top above, underneath below

Since posting
the pinner's bone, I’ve been wondering
whether I’d find any bones which have been worked and used as tools. Funny how you
tend to find things you've pondered about. This one looks like it’s made of
horn. Cut in half with a rectangular notch cut away at the top, it’s 7.5cm long and 3cm wide. A diagonal section on the right of the horn has been worn away, presumably by a
right handed person’s thumb when they used it as a tool – but what did the tool
do?

Friday, 1 June 2012

When I got
home I laid out the bunch of nails,I
had this time bothered to pick up from the Thames foreshore, I was touched by
their quirkiness andimperfect beauty.

Nails found Mudlarking on the Thames

The pointy
ones will have been made between 1700-1800. Each one will have been handmade by
nailers or blacksmiths. Heating an iron rod, they would achieve the point by
hammering each side. The nail was
then inserted into an anvil or nail
header and the top hammered into a head. ‘Roseheads’ a shallow tent like head
with 4 panels were the most common, others were adorned with broad butterfly
heads or L heads.

Handmade Nail with Rosehead found Mudlarking on the Thames

Nail making
machines were invented in the US at the
end of the 18th century. Nails with no point, but a tapered sawn off
end are not handmade, instead made in
one of these machines.

By the first
part of the 20th century most nails were made from steel and the process
was fully mechanised. A more
detailed description can be found at history of nails

As my good
friend Maddy says, we tend totake
everything for granted, never considering how they are made, so removed from
their manufacture. Gazing at these small objects, for a moment, offsets this 21st
century mentality.